Lilo

[Soda_Popinsky]

So I was messing around with Gnome...

I dual boot XP and Slack, there is a tool I found that edits your lilo configuration. I noticed I misspelled my Windows boot name during the slack install, so I fixed it. Now when I boot, I boot straight into Windows. It has the "Booting whatever" screen from Lilo, as if the delay is set to 0. I think the lilo tool in gnome has the delay set to 0 by default and wrote it wherever.

Googles tell me that etc/lilo.conf is responsible, but I was not able to edit it from windows. So I fired up my local area security knoppix live disc, mounted the linux partition and edited first the timeout= field from 0 to 30, then the delay= field from 0 to 30, and then both from 0 to 30 and nothing worked. (the drive was writable btw)

I still can't boot into Slack. Everything is telling me that lilo.conf needs to be edited, but I don't think thats the case.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[fyrewall]

once you edited lilo.conf did you run /sbin/lilo for the changes to take effect?

[Soda_Popinsky]

[offtopic]

Posts: 311

I hope you are a 311 fan... no more posts if you are!
[/offtopic]
Thanks, I'm about to reboot and try it.

[fyrewall]

Let me know how ya go mate ...

looking up 311 on google now as i have no idea who they are

[Soda_Popinsky]

[offtopic]311 is a band, they were popular mid 90's and sorta popular again nowish... listen to the song "down"[/offtopic]

OK, I ran it like you said, but it won't take. At least not with a bootdisc. I think that would work if I were actually in the linux I am trying to boot right now, but because I am on a bootdisc, I can't edit the lilo.conf file /sbin/lilo points to.

I have a feeling I'm missing something stupid. Let me know.

[fyrewall]

put in your linux installation cd and make a bootdisk using that. from there put it in and start the computer. it will boot you to your linux and from there you should be able to log into your linux operating system. login as root or su to root from your user account and modify everything as normal ...

[chsh]

Originally posted here by Soda_Popinsky
[offtopic]311 is a band, they were popular mid 90's and sorta popular again nowish... listen to the song "down"[/offtopic]

OK, I ran it like you said, but it won't take. At least not with a bootdisc. I think that would work if I were actually in the linux I am trying to boot right now, but because I am on a bootdisc, I can't edit the lilo.conf file /sbin/lilo points to.

I have a feeling I'm missing something stupid. Let me know.

Steps:
1. Mount the drive to a mount point in knoppix like: /mnt/hd
2. cd to /mnt/hd
4. run: ./sbin/lilo -C ./etc/lilo.conf -m /mnt/boot/System.map
5. Reboot.

This is necessary since Lilo looks at /etc/lilo.conf by default, as well as the System.map in /boot for its files by default (at least on my slack install).

Once you reboot, it should work.

EDIT: Btw, Fyrewall, that won't work because the bootdisk won't know the path to the root directory, it will yield a Kernel panic: Unable to mount root FS error. It requires a few more steps.

[fyrewall]

oh ok .. well thats my inexperience shining through

*noted for future thanks chsh*

i did however think that you could use a bootdisk that would infact boot up to your linux os, so that it was the same as using lilo .. all the bootdisk does is get you to your linux installation when you dont have a boot loader configured ... from there you can run linux like normal ?????

is that not right?

[chsh]

Originally posted here by fyrewall
i did however think that you could use a bootdisk that would infact boot up to your linux os, so that it was the same as using lilo .. all the bootdisk does is get you to your linux installation when you dont have a boot loader configured ... from there you can run linux like normal ?????

is that not right?

No, it's correct, but those disks must be created either by the boot CD/disk at install time -OR- by the installed OS (so it knows where / is). You can hack up a created bootdisk in order to get it to know, and if the bootdisk will allow it, you can also pass a parameter to a standard bootdisk to tell it where the root dir. is, for example:
linux root=/dev/hdb1
If the boot image name is "linux" and the root dir. is on the primary slave drive's first partition.

[fyrewall]

ok thanks dude thats what i thought . it just didnt occur to me that it would have to be created during install or from the os .. i just wasnt thinking, i was thinking he could create it in the installed XP heh